'The Show Must Go On'
Breaking the Social Norm:
Excavating the Truth in Home Movies
---A Thesis Presented to
Graduate School of Humanities University of Amsterdam
--- In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts
Media Studies: Film Studies
Under the supervision of: Alexandra Schneider And Second Reader: Charles Forceville
--- by
Patricia Kate Roberts
ii © 2014 Patricia Kate Roberts ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ABSTRACT
Patricia Kate Roberts: ‘The Show Must Go On’
Breaking the Social Norm: Excavating the Truth in Home Movies (Under the supervision of Alexandra Schneider)
The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between the ‘perfect imperfections’ (Forgács, 2008) that can be seen in home movies and the sociocultural processes which underlie such movies. The additional purpose of this thesis is to develop a new method of analysis that can further give
value to such films as historical documents.
The home movie footage used in this research was shot between 1952-1980 and is from a private collection. I choose this private collection because of my extensive knowledge of the context and culture in which they were filmed. Methodologically, this thesis first applied a Grounded Theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) approach to the footage, through which many different
imperfections were identified, often amounting to the breaking of social norms. Further analyzing the results thus found by combining Goffman’s micro-social theory of Dramaturgy (1959) with Bhaskar’s macro-social theory of Critical Realism (1989) made it possible to investigate the historical and sociocultural processes, which led up to such instances. These were then divided into three case studies: “Film Etiquette”, “Power Structure” and “Pat’s Filmmaking Style & The Crisis of Movement”. Each of the case studies reveals a different aspect of normality in the society in which the films are embedded.
The result of this study is that ‘perfect imperfections’ can relate to the sociocultural processes, which underlie home movies by being moments in which social norms are broken. Further historical value can be given to such documents by starting from these moments, and analyzing the processes that lead up to them through a combination of dramaturgical and critical realist analysis.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would first like to express my special thanks of gratitude to my Grandmother, whom without her and her permission to use her films, this thesis could not
have been made possible in the form that it is.
In addition, I would like to thank my supervisor Alexandra Schneider who helped me immensely throughout entire thesis writing process. And Finally, I would like to thank Dylan Paauwe and my family for their massive encouragement and support throughout this whole year, during the
Natchez
If you doubt your social fame,
‘Git an old house and give it a name. If you still lacks social position,
‘Git it put in the Pink Edition. If your position is still not clear, ‘Git it decorated by a Natchez queer. But, really, the mostest important of all is finagle your brat into the pilgrimage ball. But really the mostest, most ultimate thing is finagle your brat into Queen or King We’re all aware of the social mystique
that sticks to the gal with the finest antique. So, ladies, ladies, let’s hold a quorum,
to see who’ll rule the Antiques Forum. To us this is now our holiest cause, since we’s all well into menopause.
So you give a luncheon and I’ll give a tea. And I’ll snub you and you snub me.
And when it’s all over we’ll make our amends, pretending to be the closest of friends.
What makes it all so goddamned funny, is all it takes is a little money.
And when it’s all over, we’ll have to admit the whole goddamned thing is a big pile of… old furniture
- Howard Pritchartt, Jr. circa 1985
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction………1
2. History………..6
2.1 About the Filmmaker……….6
2.2 About the Footage………8
2.3 History of Natchez………10
2.4 History of Home Movies in the 1950s-1970s……….15
3. Methodology………18 4. Film Etiquette……….24 4.1 ‘Self-Censorship’………25 4.2 Children Behaving……….29 4.3 Accidents………..33 5. Power Structure………..37 5.1 Siblings………..37 5.2 Parents to Children………..41 5.3 The Help………49
6. Pat’s Filmmaking Style & The Crisis of Movement………60
6.1 Posing……….60
6.2 Being Posed………65
7. Conclusion……….69
Appendix A Images.……….71
Appendix B Example Descriptions from Home Movies….……….76
LIST OF FIGURES & DIAGRAMS
Figure 1: Horses escaping pen Easter 1963………20
Figure 2: Pat tripping on curb 1952………..25
Figure 3: Pat telling Billy to ‘Quit’ 1964………..27
Figure 4: Pat and Billy holding Betsy Easter 1953……….…28
Figure 5: Patricia’s ninth birthday 1966……….……31
Figure 6: Maypole performance 1960………33
Figure 7: Betsy and her uncle at the beach 1955………..34
Figure 8: Bill’s christening 1955………35
Figure 9: Betsy and Bill are cowboys and Indians 1956………..39
Figure 10: Bill and Patricia Easter basket 1958………40
Figure 11: Betsy sitting next to nativity scene 1955………..42
Figure 12: Patricia in ballet costume 1965………44
Figure 13: Patricia and Pat at the Pilgrimage 1967………46
Figure 14: Toddlers playing outside 1954……….48
Figure 15: The help holding Betsy 1952……….51
Figure 16: Betsy walking with the help 1953……….53
Figure 17: The help in the window 1954………54
Figure 18: Patricia’s second birthday 1959……….56
Figure 19: Elizabeth playing with the help 1980……….58
Figure 20: The Natchez Pilgrimage 1965………62
Figure 21: Betsy with Christmas presents 1955……….66
Figure 22: Betsy pushing her cousins 1956……….67
1. Critical Realism Layer Diagram for Home Movies……….22
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1. Introduction
“The 'naturalness' of the home movie operates to conceal its construction. It is seen precisely as true,
real and authentic because there is no apparent fabrication. The home movie operates on a mythic level because it
successfully masks the social and cultural processes that went into its making”
Elizabeth Czach (14, 2000)
In home movies, a specific reality is constructed, as the films typically depict happy, family moments, leaving out the messiness of normal life that include arguments, illness, and tragedy. I expect to demonstrate that despite a moviemaker’s attempt to control family moments caught on film, it is unable to completely filter out the reality of life and cultural stigmas. My research has found that this happens in two particularly ways: First, reality imposes its way into the 'show' being filmed; for instance, when a viewer can see something unexpected happen and the event is accidentally caught on film. The other way is through the camera ‘invading’ and thereby changing the reality being recorded. An example of this is when the presence of the camera causes someone to change his or her behavior.
Through Péter Forgács's (51, 2008) ideas of such “perfect imperfections,” I will analyze specific shots to reveal the different layers of 'reality,' which can be seen to be present. He argues that despite home movies aiming to show a perfect, happy life, “they nevertheless remain in the realm of imperfection because of the inevitable presence of 'mistakes'” (51, 2008). However, these “mistakes” in home movies make the genre more “powerful” and “real” (Forgács, 51, 2008). This thesis will analyze how historical, societal and cultural influences play a role in such events in the footage. Combining Bhaskar's Critical Realism (1989) with Glaser and Strauss's Grounded Theory Method (1967), I will attempt to answer the question: how do social norms become apparent in home movies?
exists in private archives and family collections. Since my research topic includes looking at social norms within one family in particular, in addition to a specific culture, it is important that I note the context in which the films I selected were made and my relationship to the members portrayed. I have chosen my grandmother's home movie footage shot mostly in Natchez, Mississippi between the dates of 1952 to 1980, from when her first baby is born until her first grandchild turns three. I have first hand experiences of the town the footage is filmed. In addition, I can delve further into the material and analyze each person’s responses as natural or artificial. For instance, I am able to dissect even the most minute facial expression because I know the person and why they tend to make that expression. Since most of the subjects involved are still living, I also have the ability to ask them about certain moments that are not quite clear in the films.
In many respects, my grandmother’s home movie footage is like most home movies. She filmed all of her children's birthdays, holidays, family vacations, and important developmental milestones such as a baby's first steps, as well as ‘everyday’ scenes such as her children playing outside. At other times, her films can be quite unique because of the particularity of its “moments of imperfections.” As home movie scholar Alexandra Schneider states, “home movies are products that merge with specific historical, social, psychological and cultural contexts” (175, 2003). Therefore, my grandmother’s footage not only allows the viewer to see the breaking of proper film etiquette, but also the specificity of the power relations and cultural norms within the historical context the films were made. That is, the context of an upper class, Southern family during the 1950’s.
At the time, home movies were made by the middle to upper class of a society, because cameras, the film stock, and developing the films were very expensive. Moreover, the American ideal for a perfect, happy nuclear family was seen as white and middle to upper class. Elizabeth Czach, a Canadian film and English scholar explains the significance of this. She points out that “home movie advice of the 1950s uniformly operates on the suppression of the non-ideal” (30, 2000), and as many home movie makers tried to suppress their cultural and societal “non-ideal” images, they only filmed the moments
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that showed a happy, perfect nuclear family. Czach explains that with this constant suppression a new reality formed in which “dominant bourgeois ideologies appear natural and normal” (Czach, 5, 2000). However, the firmer the suppression, the easier it becomes for accidents to slip into the films. This paper will further develop this idea: the revealing of social norms when they are broken.
I approached this topic by means of the Grounded Theory Method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), building my analysis from the ground up by starting with the home movies first. Because of this, the readings of different scenes are primarily based on a close description of what can be seen in them. I then additionally analyzed the footage by applying Roy Bhaskar’s Critical Realism (1989). It considers social reality, as having several layers beyond what is observable, which are thought to underlie and generate the surface appearance. This ‘macro’ angle of analysis is supplemented by Erving Goffman’s micro-sociological approach, which considers social life as a performance on a stage, with a corresponding front- and backstage (Goffman, 1959). This can be seen in the footage when someone changes their behavior once they realize they are being filmed, or, in other words, when they are suddenly thrusted onto the front of the stage. Description of this theoretical approach and applied methodology, as well as Péter Forgács's idea of “perfect imperfections” are presented in more detail in the Methodology chapter.
The discussion and analysis of the home movie genre is a relatively small, but growing field. Prominent theorists regarding the topic are Richard Chalfen, Patricia Zimmermann, Michelle Citron, and the aforementioned Péter Forgács. Richard Chalfen is thought of as one of the veterans in this area of research. His article, “Home Movies as Cultural Documents” (1982), can be considered to have introduced the idea that home movies are even worth researching. He followed up this article by publishing what is acknowledged as one of the most comprehensive studies of domestic home modes of photography and moving images. Titled Snapshot Versions of Live (1987), it is still widely used today. His focus is on how home movies and photography have become a culturally constructed form of behavior for families, how they are formed and continue to form in this new digital era.
Patricia Zimmerman has published several articles and books about 8mm amateur filmmaking and home movies in particular. In her book, Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film (1995), she looks at amateur film in a broad light by taking into account the ideological, economic, and sociocultural aspects that come together in the making of home movies in the United States. In her more recent book publication along with Karen L. Ishizuka, she co-edited, Mining the Home Movie: Excavations in Histories and Memories (2008). In this book, she is interested in dissecting the information home movies have to offer. It consists of a series of essays in which different types of artists, researchers, archivists, anthropologists and historians excavate the different aspects of home movies. So doing, this book helps place home movies in the greater context of archival and film studies today.
Michelle Citron tackles home movies from a much more personal basis by comparing her own home movies with her memories of that time in her life. Her book Home Movies and Other Necessary Fictions (1999) combines the history of home movie making, her memories of her own childhood and of her abuse, and what is actually projected on the screen. In other words, it looks at the difference between what actually was and the constructed reality that was projected in this context. Similar to Michelle Citron, who is recognized as an artist first before a scholar, is Hungarian media artist and filmmaker Péter Forgács. He creates films with archival and home movie footage usually dating from the years between 1920 and 1980. He is not necessarily known for his scholarly work, but his essay in Zimmermann’s Mining the Home Movie (2008), inspired this thesis.
Like Citron and Forgács, my background is primarily in filmmaking, having created two experimental narrative films with my grandmother’s home movies already. Also similar to Citron and Forgács, I have approached this thesis from a practical base, looking at the images first before applying theory. With these four major contributors to the field of home movies, along with several others, I have been able to view and analyze my grandmother’s home movies with an ethnographic eye, in looking at what home movies reveal about the culture and society they are filmed in and how they do so, and specifically how ‘mistakes’ caught on film contribute to sociocultural analyses.
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In accordance with the method of Grounded Theory, all of the instances where imperfections happened were selected. Each incident was then categorized and examined for how they all related to one another. After several different modes of organizing and categorizing were considered, three main themes emerged, which I considered most suitable as they were able to encompass most of the incidents found. These themes will be considered as the following case studies: “Film Etiquette”, “Power Structure”, and “Pat's Filmmaking Style & The Crisis of Movement”. This thesis is organized into eight complete chapters: “History”, which includes information about the filmmaker, the footage, the town of Natchez and a short history of home movie making itself. The next chapter is the “Methodology”, which will describe and explain the various theoretical approaches used for this paper. The following three chapters are the case studies, which are further divided into subchapters. Then, the conclusion will summarize the findings of the thesis. Resulting in a total of seven chapters.
2. History
2.1 About the Filmmaker
Pat Brandon Dale, my mother’s mother, was born in 1930 in Natchez, Mississippi. She is the third child in a family of four sisters. She grew up in downtown Natchez, a town famous for their antebellum (pre-American Civil War) homes. Pictures of these Antebellum homes in Natchez is included in Appendix A. She, however, she grew up in a newly constructed house because her mother thought the old houses would have mice and bad plumbing. She received her first camera as a Christmas gift when she was about eight years old. It was a 'Brownie' camera that included a small kit with which she could develop the film (see Appendix A.). In 1942, her father purchased a print enlarger. They would set it up on their kitchen table, blacken all the windows and use developing solutions to enlarge the negatives from her father’s 35mm camera.
She had a passion for photography and film and throughout high school, she frequently borrowed her parent's 16mm movie camera. She loved taking pictures, and would do so at every opportunity she had. When she was 16 years old in 1946, as a birthday gift, she received her first movie camera, an 8mm Dejur (see Appendix A.). And for Christmas the same year she received a Dejur projector. She only used black and white film the first year she had the camera and then progressed to color film. During World War II, and for some time after, the United States was in austerity mode. Describing the situation, Pat says:
“People didn't spend money on useless things; products were not available and something like taking millions of pictures to have developed and printed, like is done today, was unheard of. This is probably why most of our pictures jump from birthday to birthday, to vacations, to Christmas, to Easter, etcetera! […] It seems we only got the cameras out to more or less document a
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special occasion; or to capture something cute your child was doing; or to record a gathering of friends and family” (Dale, 2014).
Pat has always been interested in her own family genealogy. Discovering and reading stories about past relatives fascinated her. This is probably why she was so interested in taking pictures of her own family and writing down her memoirs, so that future generations can learn about her life and her family. She has written and published two books. The first is about her memoirs from her birth until she married at 21. In this book, she includes three chapters about her parents, her paternal grandparents and her maternal grandparents. The second book is an adaptation of the diary of my great-great grandfather. He was also very interested in family genealogy and wrote in his diary frequently, as his father did before him, about his life and memories. She is currently writing a third book about her life from when she had children until they moved out of the house for University.
When she had graduated from high school, her parents sent her to a two-year girls’ college in Missouri where she majored in photography and considered it as a possible career choice. However, after completing the two-year college, she transferred to the University of Mississippi in 1950 to finish her degree, where they did not have any courses in photography. She decided to drop the idea and majored in Education instead. A few months after she started University, she met her future husband, my grandfather, Wilton 'Billy' Roger Dale, and left school after one semester to marry him. She gave birth to three children, Betsy (July 1952), Bill (August 1955), and Patricia, my mother, (December 1957). Pat was able to pick up her passion for film and photography again by documenting their lives, developments and family occasions. The home movies therefore became a way for Pat to combine her love of the visual medium with her interest in genealogy.
Pat was always the primary filmmaker and editor of her family home movie films. Although men were typically considered as the primary photographers of the home setting, the women were seen as the primary historians, and wrote the stories in photo albums next to the pictures their husbands had made (Kleinhans, 34, 1986; Zimmermann, 134, 1995). Pat,
however, did everything: wrote, filmed and photographed. The only moments the viewer finds her in the frame of her own home films is when she has another camera in her hand, which allowed my grandfather to have a chance to film his wife and family. In most of the shots she is in, the viewer can see she is slightly annoyed about being on film. This is because she is caught off guard and has to quickly change her position, smile, and try to look good for the camera.
This idea of looking happy is very typical in home movies, and for Pat, it also stems from her desire to be portrayed as the perfect Southern belle. This concept is seen as being educated, well mannered, always cheerful and charming. Natchez is considered to be a small Southern town with a population of 15,792 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). And as with most small towns, the women gossip a lot. My grandmother used to always say “you have to look good at all times because you never know who you might run into.” We can see this reflected throughout the films and across years as she attempts to teach her children proper Southern etiquette. And within these moments, when something goes wrong, these social norms become apparent the moment they are broken.
2.2 About the Footage
I have selected film, shot between 1952 and 1980. The four hours of footage depict scenes that coincide with Chalfen’s four main categories of typical home movies: special events like birthday parties, holidays, family vacations to the beach or to the lake, and events centering around domestic settings such as family gatherings, babies learning to walk, and children playing in the yard (Chalfen, 1987).
Although generally, with home photography it is “the mother [who] often sorts and writes the narrative into the family album, providing another voice to the story; with moving images, however, Dad has near total control” (Citron, 11, 1999). Pat also had the latter responsibility her family. With home movies, especially using 16mm or 8mm cameras, all of the editing and selecting is done within the camera. And because each roll of film is very
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expensive to purchase and develop and only contains three minutes of film, the cameraperson must be selective regarding what to capture on film. Pat had this responsibility in her family. She had to choose what she wanted to film, how she wanted to frame it, and for how long she wanted the subject to be in the frame. In deciding what to frame, the movies also reveal what she wanted to keep out of view.
An advantage Pat had in being the primary filmmaker in her family was that she was a stay at home mother, so she did not have a work schedule to take into account to film her children. If something cute or interesting was happening during the day, she could film it. This differed from typical home movies being made by the father because usually the father could only film during the weekends or holidays, when he was not at work. This is also why the viewer does not see Billy in the shots filmed at home very often. Only a few times we do see him pulling up in his car when he comes home from work.
Regarding Pat’s filming style, although she never used a tripod, her shots are fairly steady. In typical home movies fashion, she edits her reels chronologically. She often takes many short cuts of the same event or day. Seldom do we see one single long shot. Also a majority of the shots are filmed outside on their lawn. This is most likely due to the necessity of film stock requiring plenty of light. Pat films quite regularly during her children's childhood and while they are growing into teenagers. After this, she only films on very special occasions such as Christmas mornings or when her children perform in the so-called 'Natchez Spring Tableaux'. The last footage she recorded on her standard 8mm silent film camera is when their second grandchild is born in 1986.
Viewing Pat’s films was a rare family occasion. They would set up the projector in their den only once or twice a year. Patricia, my mother and the youngest daughter, fondly recalls watching the home movies with the family as “it was always exciting because the lights had to be turned off and it was like being in a movie theater” (Roberts, 2014).
Pat stores her films in large metal reel casings on a bookshelf in a large media closet and has the reels labeled with the dates, particular events, and people captured. She has kept everything in great condition for posterity, and
in 2012, 26 years after she last used the 8mm camera; she spent the year transferring most of her home movies to digital copies and scanned all of her old photographic slides onto her computer. She is keeping up with today's technology so that her grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be able to access her footage easily and for her legacy to survive.
2.3 History of Natchez
My grandmother grew up and filmed her home movies in this small town located on the Mississippi River. Natchez has a multifaceted history and culture due to its location and its plethora of settlers. The name of the town originally comes from the Native Americans, who had lived in the area before the European settlers (Delehanty & Martin, 1996). The French were the first Europeans to settle there in 1716. They built a trading post and a fort called Rosalie to protect it. They brought over many slaves from Africa and developed plantations around the area (Rosalie History, 2014). After the French, Natchez spent periods under the British and Spanish rule. Natchez sits high on top of a bluff overlooking the River. Because of this strategic location, it became one of the oldest and most important European-settled towns on the Mississippi River Valley. It was a center of trade and cultural exchange (Delehanty & Martin, 1996).
After the end of the American Revolution in 1783, the Spanish still owned Natchez. Only 15 years later, in 1798, did Natchez officially become part of the United States (Delehanty & Martin, 1996). Natchez became the first capital of the state of Mississippi, and remained so until 1822.
According to Jim Barnett and H. Clark Burkett (2001), until the American Civil War (1861-1865), which saw the Southern part of the US secede and proclaim itself an independent confederacy, Natchez was the wealthiest city in the United States. It had the most millionaires per capita. This is primarily due to the large, prolific plantations and slave labor. Cotton and sugar cane were very valuable and the Natchez riverbank became the major port for exporting these crops North and South along the river. The wealthy growers had their large croplands outside the city, in the surrounding lowlands of the
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Mississippi and Louisiana region, and built their unique and enormous mansions in and around the city limits. Natchez was also the site of the largest slave market in the State of Mississippi and the second largest in the entire American South (Barnett & Burkett, 2001).
Although located deep in the South, Natchez was not as pro-Confederate as would be expected, many of its inhabitants had moved there from elsewhere because of the promise of wealth (Pritchartt, 2012). In fact, Natchez surrendered immediately during the War after the fall of New Orleans in 1862 (Mahan, 1898). As a result the mansions were spared, more so than in any other city in the south. After the war, however, many within the white population of Natchez and especially those who were poorer, were attracted the so-called ‘Lost Cause’ myth. This ideology, which arose after the North’s victory over the South, stated that although a military defeat had been suffered by the Confederacy, a moral victory had still been achieved (Kubassek, 1992).
Despite the abolition of slavery, after the War, the economy of Natchez quickly recovered. Its’ inhabitants resumed much of their commercial trade on the River and substituted slave labor for sharecropping, a system “in which black families would rent small plots of land in return for a portion of their crop, to be given to the landowner at the end of each year” (History.com Staff, 2010). In the early 1900s, however, the city experienced an economic downturn because the expansion of the network of railroads that undermined the economic importance of steamboat traffic, and therefore the advantage of being located on the Mississippi River. Furthermore, many local industries, which had provided jobs for the area, went into decline, thus creating a drop in the population. Not much later, the Great Depression hit all of the US in the 1930’s, and the Natchez community and their economy struggled immensely during this period.
The high-society women in the town thought they had to do something. So, they decided to come together and start a group called the Garden Club. This type of club already existed in many small towns around the States, and it was designed to attract tourism to the area. The women would show their large beautiful gardens and tourists would purchase tickets to view them. This
would help with the upkeep of their antebellum homes and gardens, and ultimately give the local economy a boost (Cook, 2000). The women of this club along with other volunteers opened their huge plantation estates for tourists during one month in the spring. Tourists would (and can still) buy tickets to visit these gardens and the money would be split between the club and the owners of the properties who had opened their gardens to the public. One year, early on in the club's existence, there was a very late freeze and the club had to open their homes instead of their gardens to the public. This was a huge success and so the Spring Pilgrimage became a home as well as a garden showing event every year since (Dale, 2005; Parker, 2014; Garden Club Website, 2014).
Nowadays it is called the Natchez Spring Pilgrimage and both women and men dress up in period clothing from before the Civil War and give tours through the houses (see Appendix A.). They talk about the history of the home, the people who lived there during that time, and the antique furniture on display. Every other night during this month, there is the Historic Natchez Tableaux, also called the Pageant, which is a performance that depicts short episodes of life in Natchez from the era of the Native Americas to the Civil War, through dialogue, song, dance, and costume (see Appendix A.). During this month in the spring, the high society of Natchez reenact the history of the town that possibly never actually existed, but as a means to portray the idyllic image of life when Natchez was at its prime.
In the 1950s, the Pilgrimage, as a tourist attraction rivaled many of the other industries, based around agriculture, manufacturing and oil, which were supporting Natchez. By the 1980's “hoop-skirted hostesses were welcoming each year to the city of 20,000 a half million tourists, who were pumping $10 million into the economy” (Davis, 52, 2000). Although the city's culture and population have been in decline since the late 1980's due to lack of jobs and fresh opportunities in the area, the home movies I will be looking at are taken in a time when the small town along the River was still bustling, from the 1950s to 1980.
Historical discourse regarding Natchez, Mississippi is largely oral, perpetuated by the telling of stories from one generation to the next and
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ritualistically performed at this annual Natchez Spring Pilgrimage. It is also important to note that the entire Pilgrimage and Pageant also eludes historical facts, such as the South's defeat in the Civil War in general and the surrender of Natchez in particular, as well as the racial intolerance that lingered. In fact, it does not include anything about black history (Parker, 2014). The African-American community of Natchez has fought for a long time to add their historical experience to the Natchez canon, but it has been met with little interest.
The African-American community is essentially a 'subaltern' (Gramsci, 1967), a social group that is geographically, socially and politically outside the dominant power structure of the local area. And despite their role in building this town, they are still quite segregated from the wealthy white community. Natchez is located on a bluff above the Mississippi River. On the Louisiana side of the river, just across the bridge, there is a town called Vidalia. Different from the bluffs on the Mississippi side, Vidalia sits on very flat low land, which is even lower than the River. This town is where most of the lower class African-Americans live, and many are the domestic workers of prominent Natchez families. Hypersegregation (Massy & Denton, 1989), meaning geographical racial segregation, describes this area well. Originally coined to describe prominently black 'inner-city' versus prominently white suburbs areas, it also fits well with this situation. African-American workers live in a virtual shantytown segregated from the largely white and upper class community of Natchez by a large river. Their different places in the socioeconomic hierarchy can be seen to mirror the geographic characteristics of the place they live (see Appendix A.).
The race relations in Natchez are important to discuss, as it is highly significant to the Power Structure chapter and The Help sub-chapter in this thesis. This aspect of Natchez is, of course, intimately tied up with the history of race relations in the Southern United States as such. Directly following the Civil War, The Mississippi Black Code (1865-66) restricted much of the newly freed slaves’ liberties. It prevented them from owning land, voting, and getting a well-paid job (Pearson Education, 1995). Following this, the idea of ‘separate but equal’ was formalized by The Jim Crow law in 1876, which prohibited
intermarriage and implemented the segregation of hospitals, prisons, restaurants, toilets and schools. It ironically also banned any form of promotion of racial equality (US History, 2014).
In addition, domestic servants, exclusively black women, continued to work in the homes of the wealthy, now by verbal contract. This, moreover, remained a ‘paternal employment’, with the man of the house responsible for their employment and job duties, which also describes the relation between slaves and slaveholders (Nguyen, 2001). Up until the 1990’s it was the in norm in Natchez for the upper and middle class to have such domestic help, which helped to raise their children. The children often developed a strong relationship with the help since they grew up with them being there and taking care of them. This differed vastly from the parents, who merely saw the help as employees. It is important to note that the help almost never lived with the white employers. And, the separation law in Mississippi went to the extent of separate toilets within the white family's home for the help, which in most cases was located outside in the garage.
Moreover, during the civil rights movement in the 1960’s especially, Natchez in particular was the site of much racial violence. According to the House Un-American Activities Committee, there were at least four white supremacist terrorist groups operating in Natchez in that time (A.D.L., 2007), and many members of these groups worked at the local newspaper and the police department. Natchez had also been the headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan in 1965. Racial violence was so terrible during this time that the FBI had to send 100 agents there to control the situation. There were many car-bombings and unexplained murders (Ladd, 2005). And although The Jim Crow law was eventually abandoned in 1965, unsurprisingly considering this context, its’ effects can still be seen in throughout the footage.
Throughout the course of these home movies, there is also a historical shift between segregation and integration. This means that schools and hospitals would become open for blacks and whites alike, instead of separated by race. In 1954, the US Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of public colleges and universities because they were 'inherently unequal' (The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 2012). However, in Mississippi, and other Southern
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states, a law already existed for elementary schools to be and remain segregated, so they could not be ordered by the court to desegregate. In 1962-63, violence erupted all over Mississippi as the Federal court ordered and registered the first African-American at the University of Mississippi. Elementary school desegregation did not occur until 1964-65 due to the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, respectively (The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 2012). Whites in Mississippi, however, were still reluctant to implement any desegregation plans, so the African-American children and parents who decided to attend the white schools where heavily threatened by the white majority. In 1969, the Supreme Court ordered the immediate termination of dual school systems and by 1970 most schools began complete integration (The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 2012).
This broader context plays a direct role in the background in which the home movies were shot, as an interview conducted in 2012 with Patricia, the youngest child, shows. During the desegregation process, two black students enrolled in her middle school. Her parents immediately withdrew her from the school and enrolled her in a school across the river on the Louisiana side because their schools had not been desegregated yet. This appears to have been very common in Natchez and towns like it, showing the extent of the tension and division in the race relations at the time.
2.4 History of Home Movies in the 1950s-1970s
In the 1950's, American society saw a lot of culture changes, which intimately tied up with its’ nature as an era of post-war reconstruction. These changes are related the reduction of the workweek, which created the three-night, two-day weekend that had never existed before (Vandenbroucke, 2009). Such a weekend had become possible in part because of the automation of production processes in many industrial factories. There was also an increased in wages and paid vacations to “off-set worker boredom” (Zimmermann, 114, 1995). All of this created more time for leisure activities and disposable
income, thus driving up consumerism.
During the First and Second World Wars, like the rest of the world, Americans had to live very meagerly. With this new phenomenon of disposable income and leisure-time, Americans had to find ways to occupy their new free time. As Czach states, “leisure was a 'classless' mass phenomenon brought on by the shortened workweek that created an abundance of 'free' time,” however, such an abundance also “posed the threat of idleness and something had to be done with all those extra hours” (Czach, 18, 2000). The nuclear family became the main area of focus as an immediate reaction to these two changes. Almost instantly families had enough personal income and economic stability that allowed them to be able to care for themselves instead of depending on their extended families. They could now afford to buy their own houses, typically in suburban districts, instead of living together in a house amongst relatives (Etuk, 2012). Advertisements also started marketing leisure activities for this new, wealthy, nuclear family including the new, easy to use, portable 8mm film camera. Home movie making “emerged as a mid-twentieth century (1940-1960s) leisure pursuit focusing on the domestic sphere” (Czach, 3, 2000). Leisure-time was centered around the home and therefore home movie making became an ideal way to spend the day with the family. Home movies conscripted “'togetherness,’ family harmony, children, and travel into a performance of familialism” (Zimmermann, 133, 1995), which is what the American society of that time desired after so many years of war and depression.
Since it became a duty for families to film their family and a social norm in bourgeois society, the situations depicted in the films worked to create the cultural norms now seen in the films (Czach, 2000). This meant that especially due to 1950s American ideology of the perfect nuclear family, and the roles of every member of that family, home movies were “dominated by the ideology of the family and the idealized representations of everyday life” (Czach, 8, 2000). The content in the home movies “reveals a carefully constructed and orchestrated view of a relatively happy and successful approach to life” (Chalfen, 130, 1987), and it has created a model for the way life should be (Czach, 2000). Home movie footage do not show arguments, divorces,
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sickness, and death, but instead show people in their Sunday best, weddings, laughing, smiling, and having a good time with family and friends either in the backyard or on vacation. And, in this creation of a dominant ideology, it is also important to note that non-white families were not depicted for a very long time in the pamphlets, magazines and manuals of home movie making (Czach, 33, 2000).
Despite all of this construction, home movies especially of this time are quite interesting. They force us to analyze the relationships embedded in them, “between the maker and subject, between the film and history, between representation and history, between the international and the local, between reality and fantasy, […] and between gender and race” (Zimmermann, 85, 1996). And with my grandmother’s home movies, it is exactly these various relationships they represent and more importantly which ones they do not that are at the “core of the crisis” (Czach, 42, 2000).
3. Methodology
Since home movies are culturally specific views of the world, what they depict as the 'everyday' is always “a carefully constructed rendition of life” (Czach, 16, 2000). Through the mistakes that are accidentally caught on film, the constructed rendition becomes interrupted. A viewer can recognize the mistakes as such because of how the filmmaker choses to react to them. The mistakes become clear if the camera immediately cuts to something else, pans away from something, or falls to the ground. From these mistakes, the viewer can identify what is then absent or supposed to be absent in the shot and therefore decipher if it contradicts the social norm in the region. And as these films “do not usually lay claim to issues of wider social or historical significance, it is only through these situations that one may gain entry to these films” (De Klerk, 151, 2008) and analyze them for their greater historical significance. Furthermore, despite home movies being considered as private documents akin to family heirlooms, they are in fact a first-person documentation of culture and history. Therefore, they “position history as memory generated from the point of view of the participants” (Zimmermann, 20, 2008). And it is only when one considers them to be first-person documentations of history, that they provoke an invaluable “reexamination of issues and identity, culture, history, politics, and memory” (Zimmermann, 20, 2008). They reveal the culture in their time because of their point of view.
Goffman’s dramaturgical theory of interaction (1959) is derived from a theatrical metaphor. Describing social interactions by relating it to a theater, it points out that people act or 'perform' differently for different types of people, their audience. This can be seen as the difference between how a child behaves in front of their parents and how they act around their friends. Moreover, as in a theater, there is both the stage on which one performs or ‘front stage’ as well as a place where one is away from the audience’s gaze or ‘backstage’. The latter can be seen to correspond with how someone might be
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alone in his or her own room, compared to how that very same person would act in the Spring Pilgrimage showing off their house, corresponding to the frontstage. In other words, “there is a front stage region where the actors are on stage in front of an audience” there is also a back stage region “where individuals can be themselves and get rid of their role or identity that they play when they are in front of others” (Crossman, 2014).
Goffman (1959) divides his framework into five main concepts. They are performance, setting, appearance, manner, and front. These five concepts all play off of each other to determine what part of the stage the performer is standing, who their audience is (if any) and if they are acting in accordance to their character. The latter refers to whether they are acting appropriately in front of their audience in terms of their portrayed identity. In describing the various concepts, Goffman refers to the performance as all of the activity of an individual to their observers. This performance from the individual is highly dependent on who is around. The setting describes the location, scenery, props, and costumes that the social interaction entails. This also greatly influences the performance of the individual. This can be explained by referring back to the example of someone home alone versus his or her house being on tour for the Pilgrimage. Even though the physical location of being home in their house remains the same, their performance as an individual changes greatly due to his or her costume, props, and audience changing. Appearance is related to the performers social status, whether they wear a work uniform or their best formal clothes. It can also communicate gender, age, and occupation. Manner is their personality within their role, thus whether they act according to their social status, or not. And lastly, the front is the image the performer gives off to their audience. This is also known as a social front or social script. Social scripts are the behavioral social norms of a specific area, class, gender and so on. In this thesis it can be seen in the idea of the Southern belle as well as power relationships between people of differing genders, ages and social status.
Following Bhaskar’s Critical Realist ideology (1989), I define reality as having multiple 'layers', minimally that which appears or is perceptible, and
that which generates what appears. Based on the observations of the former one can come to understand and theorize about the latter (Bhaskar, 1989). As such, reality is then not restricted to what can be observed but to what can be known through observation. I will be using an example from my grandmother’s films to explain this idea further.
The scene begins during the Easter holiday in 1963; Pat is filming three toddlers in bonnets, wearing fluffy Easter dresses and holding Easter baskets in their hands. They are in a yard filled with flowers on a sunny day. Suddenly, all three toddlers turn to look behind them, and just to the top right of the frame there is some movement. Then a man appears and runs across the frame behind the toddlers towards the action. The shot cuts to just a bit higher than the previous frame. There is a woman in the middle; and she is blocking the children from moving toward the background of the shot. All of a sudden a herd of horses is seen running through the yard and two more men run after them. As soon as the viewer can process what is happening, that the horses are escaping from their pen, the camera cuts again to the three toddlers as if nothing happened, almost as if to say 'the show must go on'. Pat pretends no mistake has occurred and the Easter holiday must go on as planned. In other words, the 'Reality' interfered with what Pat intended to capture.
Analyzing this example using a critical realist approach, the first layer being what is observable on the screen, is that suddenly all three toddlers look behind them, just to the top right of the frame. There is some visible movement where the toddlers are looking and then a man runs across the frame toward the action. The generative mechanism of this event, a term used to describe what creates or causes the observed action to occur or the mechanism that generates that which is apparent is the horses escaping. This is because the horses escaping their pen are the cause of the toddlers turning around. The generative mechanism in this example becomes known because the horses are later seen in the frame. The assumption here is that the horses were running in the background because they escaped from their pin. This assumption can then be established due to the observation of there being so many horses running from the same direction. And since the men are seen to be running franticly towards them it appears to have been an accident. In
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most of my examples it will not be this apparent but, “for critical realists, it is acceptable that generative mechanisms are not directly observable on the grounds that their effects are observable” (Bryman, 12, 2004), by observing the film, if we see the visible outcomes, we can draw a generic hypothesis’s for its cause.
Continuing on with the example, having identified the apparent generative mechanism of the running horses, the next layer would then be what made the horses run? Here, the assumption is the pen that was holding the horses somehow opened. The following layer would be why did that happen, why did the gate open? This could either be because one of the many children at the house opened it or the horses broke the gate. These layers can continue on and on. However, for the most part I will be looking at only three to four layers, which I have displayed in this diagram:
The top layer displays the purely observable experiences of the footage, the second layer is what the director is focusing or aiming their camera at, and sometimes more importantly what they are not including in the frame. This layer also includes how it is filmed, if the people in the shot are aware of it or not and how long they choose to film their subject. It can also be if the people
filmed are posed for the camera or 'natural' and not paying attention, their relationship with the cameraperson. The third layer is looking at the conceptual aim. This includes power structure within a family or culture, from parents to children or between the parents and the help. It also includes the filmmaker’s film training and experience, which can affect the framing and cuts of the shot. And lastly, the underlying layer is the historical processes that affect all of the previous layers.
I will now implement these concepts to the three main case studies: “Film Etiquette” will look at how Pat composes herself for the camera, how the children are seen in the film and the accidents such as the previous example caught on film. The next chapter, “Power Structure” will look at the power relationships between siblings, parents and children and the help and the family. The final case study, “Pat's Filmmaking Style & The Crisis of Movement”, will look at the conflict between what Pat wants in her films and what is actually captured. This can be seen through the subjects posing for the camera or being told to pose for her home movies. These three case studies relate to the different layers in the diagram above. With the bottom layer already discussed in the preceding section, the first case study looks at the underlying etiquette of 1950's society in the South. The second case study is concerned with the power structure and power relations. And the final case study relates to the direction of the camera, how Pat films her subjects and how the subjects respond to the camera.
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4. Film Etiquette
Home movies have always had a mise-en-scéne code to them. That being: well dressed, smiling, interacting in some way with the filmmaker, and being happy. It is said that this mise-en-scéne code was governed by the high-society that could afford creating home movies and photography between the 1940s-1970s. This code is not just how everything on film is seen but also a code for the filmmaker, for him or her to know what and when it is appropriate to film.
Both of these behind the scenes and front stage aspects of home movies create the “film ritual” (Citron, 1999) of the genre. Holidays, vacations, celebrations, ways of showing status through material means: abundance of food, nice dresses, presents and so on are all good examples of when it or what is appropriate to film. In other words, “what is considered proper content and behavior is dictated by prescriptive rules governing home mode image production” (Czach, 23, 2000). Although such rules have often become general in a particular society, and to some extent even across different cultures, these rules are very closely related to the distinct social norms of particular groups in a society.
These filmed rituals must be learned, either by children watching their siblings interact with the camera or parents’ teaching their children how to behave once the camera starts rolling. In my grandmother's home movies, there are several moments where we can see Pat teaching her first daughter Betsy her mise-en-scéne code as well as Betsy then teaching Patricia, the youngest daughter how to behave for the camera. In part, the focus on such things is due to Pat’s background in photography and filmmaking, which meant she was very conscious of what she would film because she knew how it would be viewed later by family and for future generations. Moreover, as one of the leading members in the Natchez community, Pat felt that she and her family must at all times maintain perfect manners and behavior in any situation. The
culture there is very strict about social manners and if one breaks these unwritten rules, they could be shunned from the community. The first section will continue this idea and will look at examples of when Pat's Southern etiquette is tested.
4.1 'Self-Censorship'
In this first example from 1952, Pat and Billy film each other outside. They seem to be in front of a lake house or a country home. Billy films Pat picking a pansy flower out of a flowerbed. After she picks the flower, she stands up and starts walking towards the camera, however, she stumbles on the curb. She tries not to make a scene of it and continues walking past the frame of the camera. Her composure during and after her clumsy trip is what is significant in this shot. She smiles slightly but it is clearly observable that she is embarrassed. She and her husband are still at the beginning of their first year together. She wants to be the perfect, smooth wife she sees in Hollywood films and on television. Before she falls, she has a big smile on her face and is looking directly at Billy through the camera lens. However, after she trips, she looks away from the camera the entire time until she is out of the frame. And her happy smile with teeth changes to a forced smile with only her lips. It would also seem that in this moment, if she did not stumble, that she would have stood in font of the camera for a moment, showing the flower she just picked. But because she did trip and is embarrassed, she immediately walks out of the frame without looking at Billy, the camera.
Her action in this moment relates to her ideas of and upbringing as being a Southern belle. During the 1930s and 1940s in the South, women had to be polite, well spoken, and look proper. She was taught these manners through her mother, who was part of the original Garden Club in Natchez, and through her three sisters. For her to trip in front of the man she loves at the beginning of their relationship, and for it to be caught on film must have been a humiliating situation for her. But she handled it like a 'lady'. Using her charm and manners, she ‘smoothed over’ the break her tripping had caused, in the
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social norm of being a composed Southern belle. The Southern belle is seen as a woman with charm, beauty and grace (Dictionary.com, 2014). The idea stems from the image of the South before the War, of a hoop-skirted young lady, with whom every one is in love with and her wits and charm can protect her from any situation.
In the next example, Pat and Billy seem to be much more comfortable around each other. It is at least 12 years after they have had their first child together. The scene takes place on a sunny day in 1964, in the large garden of a plantation home. It is during the Natchez Spring Pilgrimage and all of the children are dressed in hoop skirts. The shot changes to a semi-close up of Pat, wearing a dark blue dress with a jeweled broach and pink lipstick. At first, she is unaware she is being filmed. Though, once she realizes she is, she quickly smiles for the camera. After smiling for a while, she turns her head as if to pretend to not notice or care about the camera's insistent focus on her. She turns her head back toward the camera and smiles again once she realizes that Billy is not going to stop filming her. She then tilts her head and giggles a little, unsure of what more to do as the situation becomes slightly awkward. She then, mouths the word 'quit' underneath her smile before the camera cuts to a different shot.
This shot demonstrates, in this very short instance, how she handles her annoyance of being filmed for too long. She smiles at the camera and Billy as if to pose for a still image. As the camera keeps rolling, she does not know what else to do for it. She then turns her head to look away, maybe to appear natural in front of the camera or maybe to look for an escape, for someone to join her, and then looks back at Billy again. The camera here is invading, forcing her to behave a certain way for an extended period of time. She has seemed to fulfill her role as the subject of the home movie in looking nice for the filmic moment on the cinematic 'front stage', and now she wants to return to her life outside the limits of the frame. However, she is trapped on this stage for longer than she wants. She tries to 'play it off' and giggles in her insecurity. But then, she snaps and tells her husband to 'quit' filming her.
Even though she is annoyed, she remains poised for the camera, mouthing the word while still smiling.
Because of her Southern upbringing and her ideals of being a proper Southern young woman, she feels she has to maintain her composure. She keeps her front stage ideal projection while Billy is filming her, even though it was a moment of awkward tension. If she had not mouthed the word 'quit', it would not have been definitely observable that she was becoming annoyed with Billy. But because she does say it, it becomes noticeable in her actions that she is uncomfortable. Since the footage is silent, she probably was aware that saying ‘quit’ in between her smile would not be very noticeable in viewing it back on a projector.
The last scene in this section, from 1953, begins with Billy holding their first daughter Betsy as he is standing. It is Easter and they are outside in their backyard after Easter egg hunting. Billy talks to Betsy for a moment, and then smiles for the camera, and then talks to her again and points to the new stuffed animal she is holding. He then looks and smiles at the camera again. He does not try to get Betsy, who is only one and a half, to interact with the camera. And it is important to note that the angle of the camera in this shot is low.
This scene contrasts with the next shot, where Pat is sitting down with Betsy in her lap and Billy, who is filming, is still standing up. This creates the angle of the shot to be filmed from a high angle. While Pat and Betsy are on screen, the whole scene Pat tries to get Betsy's attention to at least look at the camera and better yet to smile while looking at the camera. She is trying to teach her to act like a proper young lady for the camera. However, Betsy is distracted with her new Easter candy and is completely uninterested. Because of how young Betsy is and her lack of attention to the camera, this leads to Pat failing to get her to look at the camera. And because of this failed attempt, Pat struggles to maintain her own smile and proper etiquette, though she is just able to do so.
This sequence and the angles of the shot demonstrate a metaphor for the power structure within the family. Billy, being the father and the patriarch,
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does not show Betsy how she should act in front of the camera, but instead just lets her do what she wants. Pat's acts as the subservient wife and caretaker of the children, makes sure her child grows up with proper manners, as Southern belles should. Explaining this example through critical realism, the layers in this shot are seen first as the historical processes of America in the 1950s through family structure. The perfect nuclear family, where the father provides financial security for the family and the mother stays at home and cares for the home and children. This, along with Southern culture during this time, which only emphasizes their specific roles as mother, father and child, can be seen to generate the shots where the man stands up with the baby, smiling at the camera because he knows that’s what he should do, being filmed from an upward angle. And Pat sitting down with the baby, teaching her how she should behave, with her husband is standing filming her from a sharp downward angle. In both of the ways Pat and Billy act and respond to the camera and with Betsy, creates a visible aspect to the social norm being broken. This is because it reveals their different positions in terms of their power structure, which has been described.
These few examples show the moments when Pat's Southern belle mentality is tested and how she reacts to these tests. These tests are the result of the various generative mechanisms, such as the curb causing Pat to trip in the first example, the invading presence of the camera in the second example and the presence of and reacting to Betsy and Betsy's behavior in the last example. It is in these actions and reactions of Pat that expose the social norms within the society of Natchez. In the next section, her children behaving in front of the camera will be examined.
4.2 Children Behaving
Children are typically seen as the main focus of home movies. When a husband and wife have kids, it is often the reason for them to buy a home movie camera. Fred Camper, an artist, writer and lecturer, describes the way children are presented in home movies as “seen by the camera/parent not as
human beings, but as objects and images, as appearances to be preserved rather than as whole persons with their own independent psyches” (11, 1986). Parents filming their children want to control how their children look and act in front of the camera, like the way one can control an object. Parents do not see their child through the lens as an individual being with feelings and desires of their own. Despite this view of parental control through the lens, however, children have a tendency to ruin their parents front stage desires on film because they are too young to understand the mise-en-scéne code for perfection.
Many times in these home movies, there is an observable verbal command between the filmmaker, Pat, and whom she is filming whether it’s her children or others. Despite the film being silent, there are moments when we can see the response action from the subject on film to the presumable ‘command’ of the filmmaker. In one clip during Patricia's ninth birthday, in 1966, all of her friends and her are standing around the dining table. They are all standing still and smiling for the camera. Most of the girls are standing either with their hands behind their back or holding them together in the front. They are being very well behaved for Pat. Patricia makes a funny, happy face at first but then she quickly changes her appearance after acting silly. It is presumable Pat told her to change her facial expression from the other side of the lens because none of the other girls are acting silly and Patricia is so quick to change her expression. They stand there for a while as Pat films them. Then suddenly, most likely they were told they didn't need to look nice anymore, they immediately turn around to face each other and start playing a game where they dance until they are under the table. They do not realize they are still being filmed, but once they do, they all stop dancing, look back at the camera at the same time, giggle in embarrassment and then pose and smile.
The camera's presence and the knowledge of being filmed or not changed their behavior, the invading camera changed the 'reality' being filmed. As soon as the kids thought it was okay to start playing again, because they thought they were finished being filmed, they started dancing and acting silly. But once they realized they were still being filmed, they knew their behavior was inappropriate for Pat’s film etiquette. They immediately stopped what they
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were doing and assumed a ritual pose. The front stage in this instance is being on film, the camera is the stage and the director controls how the subjects behave. The backstage, is when they thought they were not being filmed anymore, and could be normal playful kids again. However, they were caught in the act. Pat, at least to some extent the ‘director’ of the performance, while continuing to film them dancing, seems to have said something to the children because of the synchronicity of the children turning their heads toward the camera, and the synchronicity in their reaction once noticing the camera was still filming them.
In the next shot, there is literally a stage where the performance is taking place. It is at the Natchez Tableaux, or Pageant, and Betsy is dancing in 'the Maypole'. This section of the performance illustrates when the British governed Natchez. There are two maypoles, one for the very young children who just walk around the maypole for a few minutes. This aspect is part of the performance because the parents find it adorable seeing the toddlers wearing make-up and the tiny hoop skirts they have made. The older children of around eight to ten years old learn a choreographed dance to perform around the large maypole at the center of the stage. There are a few cuts, jumps, and changes of angles that lead me to believe Pat edited this section. As Betsy dances with her partner, every time she faces the camera (or Pat) she smiles. There is some film deterioration and then the dance starts from the beginning in the footage. Since the pageant runs several times a week for a month, this is probably filmed on a different day. Although, it is filmed from a different angle, Betsy is doing the same dance. At one point, in the last dance sequence of the performance, the boys are supposed to skip with their ribbon in one direction and weave in and out between the girls, and the girls are supposed to do the same in the opposite direction weaving through the boys. This is so that they create a braid with the ribbon around the pole. However, the boys become confused with whom and how they are supposed to weave and they create a large jam of half of the group dancing. Four of the boys bump into each other and the girls don't know who to skip around. After a few moments they keep moving, but at that section of the circle, it continues to be confusing
